Order of Possessor and Possessum (Feature 2)

From Apics

Feature Annotation

This feature concerns the word order within an attributivepossessive construction, i.e. the order of the possessor noun phrase with respect to the head noun (or possessum).
Please restrict yourself to the position of possessive noun phrases containing (full) nouns, rather than ones involving only a pronominal word. Whether or not the construction involves other words or affixes on the head or the possessor noun is irrelevant for this feature. In English the girl's cat, the girl’s is the possessor noun phrase, while cat is the head noun, so the order is possessor-possessum. French, on the other hand, has a possessum-possessor order: Le chat de la jeune fille [the cat of the young girl] 'the girl's cat'.
The term possession is used in this context in a broad sense, and includes
(a) body parts and kinship relations, as illustrated by French le bras de Jean [the arm of Jean] ‘Jean’s arm' and le père de Jean [the father of Jean] ‘Jean’s father',
(b) possession or ownership: le crayon de Jean ‘Jean’s pencil’,
(c) a relation similar to that of a subject and verb, as in la mort de Jean ‘Jean’s death’, and
(d) a relationship akin to that of an object to a verb: la construction de la maison ‘the building of the house’.
In fact, the possessive relation can be described as simply involving some semantic relation between a noun phrase and a noun, the particular relation being determined by inference from the semantics of the words involved and from the context.
If both orders occur (e.g. if there are two different possessive constructions, such as English John’s house/the house of John), please select both values and indicate the relative importance.

Additional remarks

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Values

Value		Value Annotation
1	Possessor-possessum	West African Pidgin English Kofi im bike [Kofi his bike] 'Kofi's bike'
2	Possessum-possessor	Papiamentu e kas di Pedro [the house of Pedro] ’Pedro’s house’

WALS No.

86 (Total)